


The Thief's Curse

by Zigster



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Art History, Forced Proximity, M/M, Magical Bond, Minor hallucinations, Post-Hogwarts, curses gone wrong, getting trapped in a museum, slightly wild magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-02-07 06:35:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21453613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zigster/pseuds/Zigster
Summary: “Stop it,” Harry said.“What?”“You’re staring.”“Well, I’ve not much entertainment available to me just now. Your animalistic stalking of the perimeter is it, I’m afraid. So, the choices are either you stop your incessant pacing or you bear my continued glowering. Take your pick.”
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 20
Kudos: 161
Collections: Harry/Draco Owlpost 2019





	The Thief's Curse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sassy_cissa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sassy_cissa/gifts).

> Dear Sassy_Cissa, I truly hope that you enjoy this silly little story I've written for you. Not only is this my first ever HP fest fic, this is also the first time I've written an HP fic in over ten years! (Seriously, where did the time go?) I tried my darndest to get as many of your likes in here as I could: getting together (getting back together), Post-Hogwarts, Clever!Draco, forced proximity, bonding, bed-sharing(ish), smoking!Draco . . . I threw it all at the wall and here's what stuck. I hope you dig it. Happy Holidays!

* * *

The first thing Harry noticed after regaining consciousness was the scritch-scratching of rats running through the plaster wall behind him. The sound prickled at his senses and he shifted away from it, groaning as he went. Everything hurt. His back ached, his head throbbed, and his hands stung with the radiating remnants of the curse that had burned his wand right out of his fingertips. The ashen shards of wood remained in a heap to his right, tendrils of smoke still drifting towards the coffered ceiling. He didn’t chance another look down at the odd grey tinge of his skin, nor the blue glow emanating from his right hand, an ominous aura of unknown magic that mocked everything he’d ever studied about wand lore. 

Across the expanse of the oddly cheery pink and green-veined tile, he heard an overly dramatic sigh and scowled as his sense of time and place came back to him. Draco Malfoy sat across from him, prim as you please and the very reason why Harry found himself wandless, concussed, and subsequently trapped in a room with no exit.

Malfoy sighed again and Harry snapped. “What now, dammit?” 

“Hmm? Oh, nothing. I am happy as a clam stuck here in this circular tomb with you. Truly, I want for nothing. I am a bastion of contentment, Potter. Really.” 

Harry closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the dusty rose plaster with a thud, which he regretted as a new well of pain seared its way through his temples. 

“Would you like me to soothe that headache for you?” 

Harry had expected sarcasm, but Malfoy sounded sincere. Harry looked at him, curious. “You know healing spells?” 

“Quite a few.” 

Harry raised an eyebrow, intrigued. He nodded and not a moment later, Malfoy had issued a wordless spell that sent the cool sensation of trickling water cascading over his head and down his neck, eradicating any and all traces of pain. He shivered at the feeling, not chilled but pleased. He smiled, unable to stop himself before remembering that the reason he was stuck in this room on this floor, with two singed hands (one glowing blue) was because of the very git who’d just relieved his pain. He managed a gruff _ thanks _ and stood, wanting to assess the seamless walls of the room once more. Malfoy’s gaze followed him. 

“Stop it,” Harry said. 

“What?” 

“You’re staring.” 

“Well, I’ve not much entertainment available to me just now. Your animalistic stalking of the perimeter is it, I’m afraid. So, the choices are either you stop your incessant pacing or you bear my continued glowering. Take your pick.” 

Harry laughed. 

Malfoy’s eyes narrowed. “Am I a source of amusement to you, Potter?” 

“Yes.” 

“Pray tell, why?” 

“You weren’t glowering, you were staring.” 

Malfoy tutted in disbelief, his pale hands distractedly pulling and smoothing over his dark waistcoat and pleated trousers. He didn’t look back up and Harry continued his march, murmuring small incantations at each painting he came across crowding the curved wall around them. 

The entire room, from chair rail to crown molding was, in fact, packed with paintings. Not one sliver of plaster shown between their gilded frames. Harry had counted them three times over, each time coming up with 72 pieces of art. 72 potential portals. 72 options for a way out. Problem was, they seemed to be 72_ muggle _ pieces of art, and therefore disturbingly inert. Harry poked one particularly tactile landscape covered in thickly swirled oils with an ashen finger and Draco spluttered. 

“That’s a Van Gogh!” 

“Your point?” 

“You’re violating a priceless piece of art, Potter. Have some respect.” 

“I’m not violating anything, I’m . . . gently prodding.” 

Draco raised a thin, blond eyebrow at him. Harry ignored him and moved on to the next piece, which consisted of a man standing on a balcony with his back to the viewer. There was a red velvet chair in the bottom right corner which Harry thought looked rather comfortable. He smirked at the subject’s oddly tufted hair, commiserating with the man over mutual cowlicks. 

“Gustave Caillebotte. _ Young Man at his Window _. French. 1875. That’s his brother you’re ogling.” 

“I wasn’t ogling.” 

“Yes, you were.” 

“I wasn’t ogling anymore than you weren’t _ staring _ at me earlier.” 

Malfoy sniffed and looked at Harry pointedly. Harry glared back. 

“You’re a child.” 

“So are you.” 

“Don’t be ridiculous.” 

They fell into a strained silence that lasted several agonizing seconds before Harry moved on, heading in the direction opposite Malfoy. Each time Harry would stop before a piece Malfoy would recite its title, painter, and any other vague (or excruciatingly detailed) bits of information he apparently knew about the painting. It shocked Harry to realise how knowledgeable Malfoy was when it came to Muggle art. More so, _ why _ did he know so much? Granted, their falling out at the end of one mutually awkward yet healing (and hormonal) final year at Hogwarts after the war was always inevitable, but Harry had never once considered that Malfoy would willingly ingrate himself into Muggle society, and yet— 

“Where’d you learn all this?” 

“School.” 

“Hogwarts doesn’t teach Muggle Art History.” 

“No,” Draco said, very slowly as if he were talking to a child, “but Oxford does.” 

Harry gaped. “You went to Oxford?” 

“Yes, and so have many other witches and wizards, Potter. They have a magical chapter, you idiot. What? Did you think Lewis Caroll came up with all that tosh about Alice and the looking glass thanks to the glorious, hallucinogenic properties in Absinthe? No, of course not. He was a squib and used his wizarding knowledge to enchant Muggles worldwide. Or, if you ask me, deceive them, but that’s neither here nor there, the point is—” 

“You went to uni.” 

Malfoy’s mouth still hung open from the interruption but he quickly closed it and nodded. “Yes.” 

“To study art?” 

“Among other things.” 

Harry didn’t press. He’d gleaned more about Malfoy’s life post-Hogwarts in the last five minutes than he had the last five years, and felt too full with the knowledge to take in more. Despite it all, he found Malfoy’s chosen path of study rather . . . charming. He smirked and turned back to the paintings. He was feeling better now that he was standing, his headache gone, and his mind otherwise occupied from their precarious situation. Which was precisely when his hand started to throb at his side, rudely reminding him of all that had happened within the past hour. He doubled over in pain, his left hand holding tight to his opposite wrist as if to staunch the onslaught. 

Malfoy shot up from his seat, hovering awkward and anxious near Harry, his magic crackling off of him in wild, unchecked ripples. Harry watched the yellow and purple sparks of magic bounce back off the gleaming tile beneath them with unease, wondering if he was seeing things. 

“What’s—what can I do?” Malfoy shouted. It was apparently the second time he’d asked. Harry hadn’t heard the first. 

“Not get me cursed?” Harry gritted through his teeth. 

Malfoy crossed his arms and glared at him. “I told you, it was not intentional!” 

“Yet, here we are.” Harry raised his glowing hand in Malfoy’s direction, weak with the effort, and saw the unmistakable guilt radiating from his eyes. Harry felt empathy for Malfoy at that moment and then found himself distracted by the sharp contrast of his aristocratic features. The blue light of his cursed hand reflected off of Malfoy’s porcelain skin, making him appear as if he were made of marble. Harry smiled at the thought—was he talking to a piece of art? He must have been. This wasn’t his old rival in the flesh, this was Draco Malfoy, carved for the ages into solid stone. He was the grand centerpiece to the room, the reason for its existence was to house this statue of elegant defiance, carved and brought to life from the finest alabaster the world had on offer. Giggling to himself, Harry sat down hard, his legs unsteady, chest heaving. The Draco statue followed him with his stone-grey eyes, looking concerned, which Harry found impressive, considering that he was essentially a large rock. 

He wheezed out a laugh. “Not. Feeling. Too great,” he said, his voice breaking on the last word. Harry wondering when all the air had left his lungs. In front of him, the Draco statue moved with surprising dexterity; flapping about like a bird with a broken wing, frantic and frazzled. His chiseled white hair had come loose from the onyx ribbon he’d tied it back with, strands falling into his eyes before he’d shove them back with carrara fingers, mussing it further. Harry watched him as his vision blurred, his eyesight closing in on him, as if the round wall of the room was contracting inward. 

“Dammit, Harry, don’t you dare!” He heard the statue shout before another cooling sensation overtook him and the world went black. Again. 

. . . 

Harry smelled smoke. It was sweet, alluring, with a hint of something familiar curling around his untethered thoughts. He blinked his eyes open. They felt dry and too large for their respective sockets, causing him to squint into the warm glowing light of the gallery. _ Gallery? _ he thought. No, not a gallery, a round room; a trap. He pushed himself up off the floor with unsteady arms, coming to lean back against the soft-pink plaster wall behind him. The sound of rats was still audible from behind the wall, squeaking and scritching along the lath and stone. He heard a gasp from across the room and turned his head, only to find Malfoy staring at him with unchecked (and disturbing) intensity, a cigarette slowly burning down to ash in his shaking hand. 

“Malfoy,” his voice sounded raw. He cleared his throat. “What happened?” 

“Your hand,” he said, quiet . . . hesitant.

Harry looked down, mind going blank at the shock. “It’s—” 

“Yes.” 

“When?” He demanded as he stretched his fingers out wide, feeling no pain. The singed, ashen quality of his skin had healed, the blue glow of his wand hand had somehow winked itself out, leaving nothing but the dark caramel colour of Harry’s skin in its stead. 

Across from him, Malfoy whimpered. 

“What’s wrong?” Harry asked, looking back up at him. 

“Your hand!” 

“It’s healed.” 

Malfoy closed his eyes, his jaw going rigid with strain. “Not. Healed.” 

“What?” 

“The curse, you pillock!” 

Temper rising, Harry stood on unsteady legs, wishing Malfoy would string more than four words together. Of course, the _ one time _ the man wasn’t a damn fountain of endless babble—

Harry took a step forward. “What about it?” 

“Don’t!” Malfoy shouted, holding his hands up as if to shield himself. Harry was taken aback, offended that Malfoy would think he’d hurt him just to get him to explain. He wasn’t a damn brut. 

“Malfoy, I’m not going to—” 

“Stop!” 

“Stop what?” 

“I can’t.” Malfoy’s hands moved to clasp against his throat and chest as he heaved in large gulps of air. “It’s too much.” The colour was high on his cheeks, his neck flushed with blotches of pinked skin. 

Harry felt torn. Malfoy had always possessed an obvious flair for drama, but something was clearly affecting him. He wasn’t acting, he was severely distressed and Harry couldn’t just be expected to stand there and _ not _ help. He bit his lip and watched the buttons of Malfoy’s waistcoat strain against his gasping breaths and the fall of his pale hair over the sharp line of his cheekbone as he turned his head back and forth against the plaster wall in discomfort. Harry ran a hand through his own hair in frustration. 

“Can I—” 

“No.” Malfoy was actively willing himself to calm down. Harry could see, could practically hear him counting down from ten in his mind over and over. 

Harry’s concern didn’t waver, but the fact that Malfoy was regaining some control of whatever had upset him was something of a consolation. Harry took a step back, his hands finding the wall behind him and slid down to the cold marble once more, his eyes never leaving the rigid cut of Malfoy’s jaw as he forced himself into stillness. 

Minutes passed. Neither of them spoke. 

Harry’s anxiety was spiking with the ever-growing silence, feeling uneasy about what had transpired earlier: how his hands appeared healed but, according to Malfoy, were still very much cursed. He looked down at them, at the blunt fingernails and calloused palms, the veins of his wrists and the uneven lines of his own messy handwriting carved into the back of his left hand, the words faded to light slashes of puckered skin over the years leaving only ‘must not’ and ‘lie’ visible. Seeing those three words spurred him into action. 

“What happened?” 

Malfoy huffed and crossed his arms across his chest. 

“Seriously, Malfoy, you love talking. How is it that now, when I’m actually asking you to explain—”

“You say that as if I’m some chatty gossip just wasting my time snickering away over a garden fence with the neighborhood cat lady.” The colour had returned to Malfoy’s cheeks. He shoved the fringe that had fallen into his face back off his smooth forehead. “I simply enjoy expressing myself and sharing the hard-earned knowledge that I have gleaned over my many years of stu—”

“Oh my god, you’re impossible.” Harry shook his head, laughing into his hands. This was ridiculous. 

Malfoy’s eyes went sharp as flint as they stared hard at the marble tiles. “Am I?”

“Yes.” 

“Well, then. Feel free to ignore my_ impossible _ self, if that suits you.”

“No. I want to know what happened.” 

Malfoy’s breaths were coming fast again and it struck Harry to notice that he’d not met his eyes once during their exchange. Instead, they were darting about the room, landing everywhere except on Harry. What with his disheveled hair and manic behavior, Malfoy almost seemed feral. His magic was sparking, flashes of purple and gold rippling off the chair rail behind him, circling round to Harry, tickling at his skin. Harry stood, shaking off the feeling. Malfoy took in a sharp breath. 

“Are you . . . is it me?” 

“What do you mean,” Malfoy snapped. 

“The . . . whatever the thing is that’s,” Harry gestured to Malfoy’s person as if that explained things, “making you upset?” 

“Yes. Fine. You are making me very upset. Happy?” 

Harry scoffed. “Malfoy, what the actual fuck?” He took another step in his direction. 

“Don’t!” He shouted, voice breaking. “Don’t come near me.” 

“Why?” 

Malfoy scrambled to his feet and turned pointedly away from Harry, his shoulders hunching as he curled in on himself. “You can’t—”

“Can’t what?” 

“Stop interrupting me!” his hissed. 

“Then tell me what’s wrong!” 

Their voices had risen, bouncing back at them off the walls. The paintings started to shake in their gilded frames. Malfoy’s magic bobbing in and around them like flood waters on the rise. Harry ignored them. Stepped closer. 

“I swear to Merlin, Harry, if you come one inch closer—”

“I’m just trying to—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Malfoy cried, and wrenched himself around and closed the short distance between them in two strides. 

His shaking hands moved too quickly for Harry to react, one fisting into the front of his white tee-shirt and the other grabbing hold of the haphazard bun resting at the base of Harry’s neck and yanked simultaneously. His head went one direction and his body the other, leaving him utterly exposed, his entire body tensing under Malfoy’s touch. His own hands came up to grip at Malfoy’s forearms, his fingers digging into the sinewy muscle he found there. Malfoy’s lips were at his ear, his words leaving soft pants of humid air against the vulnerable line of his neck. 

“That curse was meant to teach art thieves a lesson, _ Potter _. It was meant to punish, but you being the insufferable fuck-up of the Wizarding world, its reaction warped into something much more dangerous.” Harry shivered at the feeling of Malfoy’s magic pulsing through him. Tendrils of it weaved itself over his skin and into his pores, overwhelming him with sensation. Harry gripped his arms harder, keeping them in a tense embrace of barely contained energy—opposites at bay. 

The light of the chandelier above their heads flickered. Harry closed his eyes and swallowed as slashes of orange and gold shot back and forth across his eyelids. Malfoy pressed closer and continued to explain, “When you started to faint, I reached out, not wanting your precious saviour head to crack open on the marble tile, and your wand hand touched my skin.” He pulled hard at Harry’s hair as he spoke, his frustration getting the better of him. 

“It was instantaneous,” he said. “The moment your hand touched me, I sensed it—the_ wanting. _” Harry felt the cold tip of Malfoy’s nose run down the line of his neck before he continued, “I want you, Harry. That curse lit a fucking fire inside me. One I’ve been careful to keep tamed all these years.” 

“A fire?” Harry repeated. Feeling slow and inappropriately turned-on considering the danger he felt under Malfoy’s fingertips. 

“Yes,” Malfoy hissed. “The heat crackling and licking at our bootheels. Remember, Harry? The feel of it, the intensity.” 

Malfoy had managed to push Harry back into the wall, his thigh moving between Harry’s legs and pressing in hard. He rolled his hips and pulled at Harry’s hair so he could lick a trail down Harry’s neck with a hot tongue. Harry felt his skin pucker into gooseflesh as Mafloy blew cool air over the stripe he’d just painted him with, and he bit back a moan. He needed air. He needed space. He needed to breathe for a second and get his feet back under him. Figure out what the hell was happening to them both.

Humming against Harry’s skin, Malfoy said, “A bond.”

Harry shook himself to clear his head. Had Malfoy read his thoughts? He could feel Malfoy’s grin before he heard it.”_ Yes _.” 

“It’s the room’s fault,” Malfoy said, pulling back just enough while moving his hips in a sinful way against Harry’s. “I stupidly touched that frame and the room, thinking I was a thief, contracted around us, trapping us in. It’s a simple spell, museums use it often. But you,” Malfoy continued, his voice sounding excessively fond, “your magic inadvertently tried to undo the binding spell, didn’t it, and the curse warped into something wholly different, leaving you wandless. Untethered.” 

Harry watched the emotions play off Malfoy’s sharp features, the affection he held for him, and felt as if he’d fallen back in time, to an 8th year dorm filled with candlelight and the smell of firewhiskey heavy in the air, to the last time he’d seen such kindness in those deep silver eyes. He blinked in astonishment at this revelation right before Malfoy brought him crashing back to the present as he leaned in and bit down hard on Harry’s neck, sucking the skin up through his teeth, no doubt intent on leaving a mark. 

He pulled back with a lewd pop of lips and licked Harry’s jaw. “The Thief’s Curse is meant to bond the plunderer with the painting they attempt to steal.” Malfoy spoke as if he wasn’t preoccupied with undoing the buttons on Harry’s trousers. Harry moved to halt his progress, boggled by this new knowledge.

“You mean I could have been trapped inside a painting! But instead . . . we—” 

“Yes, Harry.” 

“But. It’s muggle art. It’s a muggle museum!” 

“Apparently not.” 

Harry’s gaze immediately whirled around the room, trying to spot movement from one of the paintings, certain that he’d checked them for any indication earlier, only to have Malfoy’s hands fist in his hair and pull Harry back to where he wanted him. He stared at Malfoy, a thought prickling at the corners of his mind. “You told me not to touch them.” 

“Yes,” Malfoy said.

“You knew.”

“I suspected.” 

Harry felt a strange well of emotion bloom inside his chest and he let his head fall forward onto Malfoy’s shoulder, overwhelmed. He wasn’t sure if it was gratitude, relief, or perhaps a mixture of the two, but Harry knew definitively that he’d much rather be tethered to this whirling dervish of an aristocratic git than a splash of dried oil paint any day. Malfoy pulled once more on Harry’s hair, reminding him of their entwined positioning and Harry groaned, giving in. He turned his mouth to Malfoy’s neck, biting him in response. 

Malfoy hissed. “Please, Harry.”

“Please, what?” he whispered, grinning. 

“Touch me.” 

“Gladly.” And then it was his turn to pull at Draco’s hair, tugging his mouth down to his own, wanting to remember the feel his lips and the taste of his tongue. 

“Wait,” Harry said, all too soon for Draco’s liking because he whined when Harry pulled back. “How do we get out of here?” 

“I assume the museum guards will eventually realise that an entire room on the fourth floor has been closed off by a tripped curse.” 

“Right.” 

Draco raised his eyebrows at Harry, asking the question. Harry grinned back and leaned in once more. 

. . . 

It was several hours before a haggard old guard with a wizened face and a walrus mustache materialised inside the room with them, tapping his foot in jovial impatience. Harry lifted his head off this arm, his eyesight blurred considering his glasses lay strewn somewhere across the floor, along with various pieces of their clothing. Beside him, Draco grumbled into a conjured pillow, his hair a wild silver mess against the sheets, mumbling about the necessities of beauty sleep. Harry smirked at him before squinting up at the man with as much dignity as one could muster whilst naked and draped atop a series of duvets piled on a marble floor of a public building.

“If you two are about done, I dare say there are a few tourists out there who’d like to see this gallery without the addition of two young male nudes.” He paused for a moment, considering. “Then again . . .” 

Scrubbing at his sleep-mussed hair, Harry nodded at the man, wanting to stop his train of thought. “Quite right.” He looked around him. “How do we get out of here, then?” 

The guard’s salt and pepper mustache twitched with amusement. “You floo home,” he said, gesturing to a fireplace embedded in the wall beside them complete with a pot of floo powder and a cheerily crackling fire that had most certainly not been present a moment prior.

“Oh.” 

The guard chuckled. 

“What about the bond, though?” Harry asked, looking back down at the still sleeping Draco. 

Rocking on his heels the guard gave him a mischievous wink before walking over to the painting Draco had touched earlier in the day. He took out a crisp, white handkerchief and tenderly cleaned the dust off its gilded edge. “I’m pretty sure you two have already worked out that particular puzzle on your own.” 

Then, to Harry’s astonishment, the man jumped, popping himself into the painting. He waved at Harry before wrapping up the subject of the painting, an aging lord dozing on a velvet pouf, in his arms and dashing off behind a tapestry with the man, their chortles of hearty laughter floating behind them on a non-existent breeze. 

Harry fell back on the pillows, feeling rather bewildered. 

“What a day,” he said to the room. Draco draped a long pale arm across his chest and burrowed closer to the warmth of his skin. Harry turned his head to take in the rare sight of Draco, quiet and content, beside him before lifting his eyes to see the blurred, gauzy wisps of fire crackling in the grate just beyond, beckoning them home. 

  
  


_ Fin. _

* * *

Infinite thanks to Lediona25 and MyMindsMadness for their beta prowess. This would be a hot mess without them. 


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